Work day

At least three people will be joining me Thursday starting at 1:00 P.M. to do the trimming and cleaning. We plan to be there all afternoon. Both Steve and myself will be bringing a variety of equipment, including string trimmers, pruning tools, and trash pickers. It would be great to get one or two more to make sure the job gets done that day.

Steve made the phone calls and got approval from the park to do the work. If we place dead sticks and branches in piles near the road, the city will clear the pile with a wood chipper. I plan to use a tarp to drag a few piles from harder to reach locations, like hole 4.

The city arborist will meet us at the park sometime Thursday afternoon. The arborist will inspect the course for safety hazards. I plan to use the opportunity to see if anything needs to be done to save the damaged tree on hole 13 and lay the ground work for new tree plantings at location TBD. We might also discuss protective wrappings for small trees that get hit often. Also, I am worried about the tree in the fairway nearest the basket on hole 1. Maybe the arborist will have some ideas for renewing the woods holes. Any other topics to raise? We need approval before doing any major tree triming. Should we discuss a little trimming on hole 19 to reduce the luck factor? In any event, I hope to establish a rapport to avoid a repeat of the hole 11 fiasco.

My preference is to take the long view and plant lots of small trees rather than just a few big expensive ones. I'd also like to see how the arborist feels about planting trees in groves rather than individually. We've seen many large trees deteriorate and fall. From what I've read, groves are far less susceptible to storm damage.